We do hope that you will be able to come to hear two beautiful works of choral sacred music at the next Birmingham Festival Choral Society concert.

Mozart’s much-loved Requiem will be performed by BFCS on 18th November, using Czerny’s beautiful, and rarely-heard, accompaniment for piano (four hands).

Mozart died at only 35 – poignantly, whilst working on his Requiem Mass. The mysterious circumstances around his last days formed the basis of the film ‘Amadeus’. The Requiem is a serene epitaph to a supremely gifted and revered composer.

In contrast, Ralph Vaughan Williams lived until his mid-80s. His Mass in G Minor, the other work in the concert, is notable for being the first Catholic Mass to be written in England since the Reformation. His experiences shortly before, as an ambulance driver in in the first World War, must surely have had some influence on the contemplative style of the piece. The Mass reflects the style of Byrd and other great Elizabethan church composers which was enjoying a revival in the early 20th century. It was first performed as a concert piece in Birmingham in 1922, and was first used as an integral part of the Mass in Westminster Cathedral in 1923.